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  #201  
Old 07-28-2019, 11:36 AM
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Default Kenjiro Nomura

Kenjiro Nomura was Hiroshima’s shortstop from 1989 to 2005. As a young man he had good power, good speed, a healthy OBP, and played pretty much every day. Sort of Alan-Trammell-like. Age 31 was his last really good year, after that he missed lots of time every season for the rest of his career, retiring after his age 38 season. Nomura’s best season was 1995, in which he hit 32 home runs (double the figure that is his career high otherwise), stole 30 bases (three off his career high), and slashed 315/380/560. While playing shortstop. The HR total was second in the league, as was his batting average, and he was third in slugging percentage. In total he was an all-star eight times and was selected to three best-nines. Albright regards him as Japan’s 9th greatest shortstop.

Nomura really wasn’t a good player in his 30s, he lost his SS job to Eddy Diaz and age quickly caught up with him. But he did hang on long enough to qualify for the Meikyukai with his 2000th hit in 2005. Replacing Nomura was kind of weird. He went downhill quickly, but he was still a star when he lost his job. Diaz was not immediately an improvement. He had two iffy seasons, one season that matched Nomura’s 1995, one decent season, and then he was off to Korea.

After retiring he coached the Carp and spent five seasons managing them. Traditionally the Carp have been a second-division team, but under Nomura they managed to improve pretty steadily. Nevertheless, his tenure was for only those five years. As of 2016 he was a member of the Kansas City Royals’ baseball-ops team in Japan. I presume that means scouting. And in 2017 he enrolled in the Hiroshima University’s MA program in “Coaching Science and Sports Psychology”, saying something about how he expects it to be useful in his second career. Which makes it sound like he wants to get back into managing.

Meikyukai: yes - Hall of Fame: no

My card is from the 1994 BBM set. Over time (probably due to hanging out on a pre-war baseball card message board) I have developed a casual distaste for standard, post 1956 American-style baseball cards. And that means BBM cards. That said, the design on their 1994 offering is pretty nice. If we should have learned anything from 1953 Bowman, it’s that less (usually-I’ll admit to a certain affection for Delongs) is more on baseball cards. And, except for the logo, the 1994 BBM set is nice and clean.
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  #202  
Old 07-29-2019, 09:47 PM
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Default Masaji Hiramatsu (pt. 2)

My policy is that I get a copy of a player's card for each collection that he's a part of. Hall of fame collection =/= meikyukai collection, so I need a second card for each player who is a member of both.

Hence today's post.

Masaji Hiramatsu was a great pitcher for the Whales. I said rather more about him in the piece just linked than I will say here.

Hiramatsu was elected to the hall of fame by the experts committee - which has jurisdiction over players who have been retired for at least 21 years. Sounds a lot like the Veteran's Committee here. There is also a player's committee, which is basically a guy's first shot at election, and special committees that elect umpires, guys who published baseball's rule book (I'm not kidding, check out Mirei Suzuki), and so on.

Japanese starters have always pitched more in relief than American starters do, but here's a fun fact about Hiramatsu: he has almost exactly the same number of complete games as games finished. 145/146, respectively.

One thing that I find curious about Japanese baseball is how seriously they take the Koshien tournament. It's the high school baseball championship, and it's a huge deal. This comes to mind at the moment because Hiramatsu's team won the tournament, and whenever someone is writing about him that fact always gets mentioned right next to the fact that he won the Sawamura Award, which, to an American mind, would seem to be a much bigger deal.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of fame: Yes

Round menkos are best known for dominating the early post-war menko scene. Basically, menko cards from the late 1940s to early 1950s are either round or relatively narrow pillars. There are many sets of each, but the round sets tend, in my observation, to be more common. Round menko cards (of baseball players at least) then disappeared for a couple decades. There was a sort of mini-revival in the 1970s. This card is from the JRM 10 set, issued in 1976. It's a common and inexpensive set (I paid more for shipping on this card than I did for the card itself).
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  #203  
Old 08-01-2019, 08:13 PM
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Default General Question about Menko Cards

Hello and thank you for your posts. Very educational as I'm just now starting to learn about vintage Japanese cards. I have some questions though that I can't seem to find answers to so thought maybe you all can help.

First, can you explain the "JCM..." set name system? it appears that there are the same numbers but for different years. Then, when I look on eBay, I see these two cards of Sadaharu Oh listed that look virtually identical but one is "JCM12e" but the other one is "JCM12b." I honestly can't see what the difference is but can you tell me how they differ?

Thanks for any info you can provide.

-Damon
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File Type: jpg JCM12b - Front.jpg (71.7 KB, 387 views)
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  #204  
Old 08-01-2019, 10:38 PM
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JCM = "Japanese Card Menko". Menko are a kind of card playing game in Japan with cards made of thick cardboard which were meant to be thrown against other cards on the ground in an attempt to flip them over. Most Japanese cards from the 50s and 60s are Menko and the numbering system is confusing because so many sets are being discovered basically out of order. Also a lot of slightly different sets were issued by the same maker in the same year, so they are given the same number but with an a,b,c etc added.

The cards of some players from JCM 12b and 12e sets are almost identical. They just know that they are different sets from uncut sheets, the 12e set has more players. According to Engel the distinguishing feature of a 12e cards is that the player image has a more painted look to it.
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Last edited by seanofjapan; 08-01-2019 at 10:40 PM.
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  #205  
Old 08-02-2019, 07:11 PM
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Default Kazuya Fukuura

Kazuya Fukuura played first base for the Marines for, approximately, ever. He broke in as a 21 year old in 1997, and was still an active player as of this year, although he has appeared in only nine games for the Marines’ minor league team. He has announced that he is retiring at the end of the season, but given that he’s only managed to play in nine games this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was, in fact, retired already. Fukuura always seems to be compared to Mark Grace, and the comparison seems apt, at least in that they’re both singles hitting first basemen. Fukuura has no power to speak of. In 2003 he managed 21 home runs, but he’s usually in single digits, and from 2012 to 2018 he managed a total of three. Fukuura’s 2000th (and so Meikyukai-qualifying) hit was a double on September 22nd of last year. Of all of the players who managed to get 2000 hits, he was the second oldest when he pulled it off, and he had appeared in the third-most games. Mike Bolsinger (former Diamondback-Dodger-BlueJay, and currently Marine) has a really nice clip of Fukuura’s 2000th hit on his twitter feed.

Given his background, that he was a singles hitter shouldn’t be much of a surprise. He was originally a pitcher, and was, in that capacity, the Marines’ 7th round draft pick in 1993. An injury curtailed his pitching career, and led to a transition to being a position player. As a left-handed thrower, his only options were first base or the outfield. He wasn’t fast, which probably explains opting for first base. He was a three-time gold glove award winner, and was selected to the best nine team in 2010.

Now, about that Mark Grace comparison. Grace was actually a good hitter, and decent player all-around, until the last year or so of his career. Fukuura… wasn’t. The last year that Fukuura was any good was 2010. He was bad in 2011, and his playing time diminished thereafter. As befits a singles hitter, he managed to keep a healthy on base percentage for a few years, but his power, never notable to begin with, slipped even further. The final 500 hits took him about 800 games spread out over nine seasons. Given that he had exactly 2000 hits at the big league level, I’m guessing that he was demoted immediately after qualifying for the Meikyukai.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: No

The card is from the 2001 Calbee set.
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  #206  
Old 08-05-2019, 10:10 PM
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Default Noboru Aota (part 2)

I’ve got an Aota card on an uncut menko sheet. But it doesn’t really fit in my binder. Tough life, I know. So anyways, I picked up another one.

Here’s what I wrote about him before.

Aota was a slugging outfielder who played with several different teams from 1942 to 1959. He held the career home run record for a little while, and led the league in home runs five times. In 1948, one of the years in which he led the league in home runs, he also led the league in batting average (barely, .001 over Kozuru and Yamamoto), but missed out on a triple crown by nine RBIs. B-R says that he was traded by the Giants to the Whales, but as always I can’t find the player who went the other way. I’m starting to doubt that they actually traded players back then.

Let’s do some adjustments for context, and see how big of a slugger Aota was. We’ll start with that 1948 season in which he nearly won a triple crown. His raw numbers were: 306/339/499, against a league average of 242/300/329. Put that into the 2018 American League and you get a 315 batting average, 359 on base percentage, and 632 slugging percentage. Let’s look at 1951 also. His raw line was 312/378/582. League average was 264/329/375. In a 2018 American League context that works out to 294/366/645. That slugging percentage is better than anyone managed in 2018, the on-base percentage, while good, wouldn’t have ranked among the league leaders. It’s a reasonably good match for what Nelson Cruz is doing for MIN this year. Given his home run hitting ways, I want to compare him to Ralph Kiner, but Aota was much faster, and Kiner was much better at getting on base. Positional differences aside, maybe Home Run Baker is the comparable American player.

Aota was elected to the hall of fame in 2009. Since he had died some years earlier, Shigeru Sugishita gave a part of his acceptance speech (his widow also gave a speech) and said that, while he was in the army, Aota was capable of throwing a grenade 84 meters. Which sounds like a hell of a long throw to me. The hall notes that he was nicknamed “Unruly Bronco”. Albright thinks he was Japan’s 71st greatest player.

Meikyukai: No – Hall of Fame: Yes

The card is an uncatalogued bromide. There must be a zillion uncatalogued bromide sets. I did a quick scan over my collection, and more than half of my bromides are from uncatalogued sets. I’ve got plenty of uncatalogued menko cards too, but the percentage isn’t that extreme. Lots of these sets are also very similar. The only difference between this card and my Tsubouchi card is that it is ever so slightly smaller. Since I already had an Aota card (if only as a part of an uncut sheet), this one doesn’t get me any closer to finishing the hall of fame collection. It’s impossible to tell precisely when this card was issued. Aota is on the Giants, so that narrows it down to 1948 to 1952, but I can’t say anything more definitive than that.
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  #207  
Old 08-07-2019, 10:04 PM
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Default Kazuhiro Kiyohara

Kazuhiro Kiyohara was one of Japan’s greatest players. He was first baseman for the Lions from 1986 through 1996, for the Giants until 2005, and then for the Buffaloes for a couple years. The Meikyukai came calling upon his 2000th hit (for the Giants in 2004), and of his 2122 hits, 525 were home runs. That figure puts him 5th all-time for home runs, just above Ochiai and just below Koji Yamamoto. He appears to have been a lumbering slugger, as both his SB and 3B figures are quite low. But if you’ve got a player who puts up a 389/520 batting line, you can put up with a certain amount of plodding.

Kiyohara’s tenure with the Lions was exceptionally successful. They were the dominant team in the late 80-early 90s period. Let’s take a look at one of these teams. Here’s the OPS leaders from the 1991 Seibu Lions: Orestes Destrade, Koji Akiyama, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Hiromichi Ishige, Norio Tanabe. Seven guys with above average OPSs (below average and part-timers omitted from the list). Destrade was an infield-outfield type from Cuba who mucked around in the Yankees and Pirates minor league systems (with a couple cups of coffee) starting in 1983. He went to Seibu and instantly became a huge slugger. Coming back to the states he was on the inaugural Marlins team, and was the second best hitter (after Mr. Marlin himself, Jeff Conine) on the team. Destrade spent 94 with the Marlins but didn’t wait out the strike. He returned to Seibu for 1995, then retired. Akiyama was one of Japan’s great players and I’ve written about him elsewhere. Ishige was the third baseman. He was a strong player in his own right. He didn’t get into the Meikyukai, but he came close. I don’t know what his glove was like, but offensively you might compare him to someone like Scott Rolen. Tanabe was a doubles hitting shortstop. Looking over his stat line, he doesn’t seem like a star to me.

They also had a nice starting rotation, or at least a nice top-3. (After that most teams sort of mix-and-match anyway.) Watanabe, the starter with the best ERA, appears to have blown out his arm in 1992, but he was a young star before that. Taigen Kaku had a relatively short but reasonably successful career. He reminds me of someone like Jimmy Key. And then there was Kimiyasu Kudo. In 1991 he was at the top of his considerable game, and he would continue pitching until he was 47. This was a really good team: a couple hall of famers, a Meikyukai member, a young star, and (effectively) Scott Rolen and Jimmy Key. That’s a team that will win you a lot of games.

Now, back to Kiyohara. He was a 17x all-star and won the Japan Series eight times. But great as he was, he could have been better. Throughout basically the last half of his career he was constantly sidelined by injuries. There were significant differences between them (first base vs. center field being one of them), but in some ways his career has the feel of Ken Griffey Jr.’s. Amazing first acts, followed by a debilitating rash of injuries. Both ended up being all-time greats, but Griffey in the 1990s felt like “great” wasn’t going to do it. At the time it felt like they were going to have to come up with some new words in order to describe him. I wasn’t hanging around Saitama in the 1990s, but I bet Kiyohara had the same feel to him.

Kiyohara was drafted out of PL Gakuen, one of the main powerhouses of Japanese high school baseball. Robert Whiting reports that the school has (or, at least, as of the writing of You Gotta Have Wa, had) a practice field with the same dimensions as Koshien Stadium at which the annual high school baseball championship tournament was held. PL Gakuen won Koshien twice while Kiyohara was a student, although perhaps ‘student’ is a bit too strong of a word. PL Gakuen’s focus is on baseball in a way that might be familiar from certain football programs in America. Hara, another Gakuen product, is alleged, upon being asked what he would major in when he went to college, to ask what a major is.

Japan takes Koshien seriously in a way that is hard for me to make sense of. I grew up next to a top college football program, and yes, reminders of that are everywhere (even people who didn’t attend the school wear school gear), but even in a huge college football town, football isn’t given the… religious?... dedication that Koshien summons. Whiting describes it as a combination of the World Series and the Superbowl, except that it also seems to be regarded as a test of character, and an embodiment of a kind of Japanese ideal. The approach to baseball and, I guess, to life, that leads to the 1000-fungo drill (doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what that is), corporal punishment for players, and “voluntary” practices that last hours after official practice ends is celebrated, finds its apotheosis maybe, in Koshien. None of that quite expresses what I’m trying to say – one of the hazards of saying something when you’re not quite sure what you’re trying to say – but there seems to be a deeply weird attitude that attends what is really a kids’ baseball tournament.

Incidentally, the chapter on high school baseball is the best part of You Gotta Have Wa, and comes highly recommended. Here’s an article about Koshien that Whiting wrote for the Japan Times.

PL Gakuen has produced 65 professional baseball players. (I wonder what the record for an American high school is.) Including one major leaguer: Kenta Maeda, currently a starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. As of 2016, however (I couldn’t find anything more recent), it had suspended its baseball program in response to what the Mainichi newspaper calls a “series of abuse scandals”. They do have a Twitter account, so maybe they’re still active, but it’s hard for me to understand what’s going on in a regular Twitter feed, much less one that I can’t read, so I’m not sure. They at any rate didn’t appear in the 2018 tournament.

Kiyohara was a flashy star. He once said that he only wanted to play professional baseball because it allowed him meet beautiful women and buy fast cars. However, he was arrested for drug possession shortly after his retirement from baseball (he was given a suspended sentence of two and a half years), and later admitted to using amphetamines while he was playing. (Rumors of steroids have also followed him around for years, but those are so far unsubstantiated.) Amphetamines were once common in MLB, but they are now prohibited and are, I think, among the substances that MLB tests for. The arrest was apparently a big scandal. Kiyohara’s kids were told to leave the prestigious school (elementary/middle in both cases) that they attended when news of their father’s problem came out. Word is that they’re moving to the US to avoid further fall out. The hall of fame had him on the ballot for several years (it seems to be common in Japan for even big stars to wait years to get elected), but removed him from the ballot after his conviction. They left open the possibility that he would be reinstated (who knows how the voting would go), but said that it would require significant rehabilitation, and that “the road is steep”. In recent years he has done things like appear at anti-addiction events organized by the Ministry of Health.

And finally, my favorite Kiyohara fact: he said that he has a very big head, and that when he joined Seibu they didn’t have a helmet that fit him. Nosing around in the team storage lockers, however, he found one of Katsuya Nomura’s old helmets (which must have been sitting there for the past six years), and it fit perfectly. He used the same helmet for his entire career, and had it repainted whenever he changed teams. (Source)

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of fame: No

The card is from the 1993 BBM set.
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  #208  
Old 08-12-2019, 07:16 PM
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Default Seiichi Uchikawa

Seiichi Uchikawa is a LF/RF/1B kind of guy, currently with Softbank. He broke into the league in 2001 at an 18 year old with the Yokohama Bay Stars, then left for the Hawks in 2011 and has been with them ever since. Uchikawa has a little power, but more of what we’d think of as “gap power” than the real thing. Expect teens HR numbers each year, topping out at 19. Likewise, his batting average is healthy but he’s not a guy whose game solely depends on it (like Gwynn, or Boggs, or Ichiro). That said, he did win two batting titles, in 2008 and 2011. That 2011 batting title also came with an MVP award. For his career he’s got a 304/350/443 batting line and 2140 hits. He’s one of the newer Meikyukai members, having qualified just last year. Allow me to nominate Fred Lynn as a comparable player, with the notable exception that Lynn was a center fielder. Looks like he was a 5x best-nine, and made a bunch of all-star teams. Notably, he had a key pinch hit in the 2017 all-star game. Who was he pinch hitting for? Shohei Otani. You’d think that wouldn’t be necessary, even though he’s a pitcher. But Otani wasn’t even pitching in this game, he was in at DH. Maybe this was one of those “get everybody into the all-star game” moves. Which I sort of understand (especially when the game is in Baltimore and Mike Mussina is in the pen), but it also leads to some very weird outcomes, where, e.g., Dereck Turnbow ends up pitching important innings in a close game.

As near as I can tell, his Japanese Wikipedia page says that his .378 batting average in 2008 is the record for a right-handed hitter in Japan. The previous mark was Tetsuharu Kawakami’s .377 mark in 1951. It also lists this as “his song”. Which I guess means walk-up music?

His initial contract with Softbank was worth 1.36 billion Yen. Which sounds like a lot of money, until you remember that one Yen is worth about a penny. I mean, I’ll take a 4 year, 13 million dollar contract, but if that’s the kind of cash that star players are pulling down it’s no surprise that Otani wanted to come to the US. (Of course what is surprising is that he didn’t wait until he was a free agent, but that’s another matter.)

Now is a good time to be a Hawk. Uchikawa has won the Japan Series five times since joining the Hawks, including four of the past five years. Things are looking promising for them this year too, they’re in first place in the Pacific League, with a healthy but not insurmountable lead over the Lions.

The Japan Times refers to him as a “future hall of famer”, which, I guess. Now I'm not advocating his induction, but Fred Lynn wouldn’t exactly be an embarrassment to the US hall either.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of fame: No

The card is from the 2013 BBM set. BBM sure loves its subsets. The one that this card is drawn from celebrates league leaders.
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  #209  
Old 08-18-2019, 05:29 PM
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Picked up this Bromide at the National:



Lefty O'Doul and Giants manager Mizuhara
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  #210  
Old 08-18-2019, 07:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman View Post
Picked up this Bromide at the National:



Lefty O'Doul and Giants manager Mizuhara
Nice pick up!

Though that isn't actually Giants Manager Mizuhara, the Japanese guy is Shinji Hamazaki (manager of the Braves).
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  #211  
Old 08-18-2019, 09:44 PM
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Default Isao Shibata

Love the bromide Adam! I'm a big fan of pretty much anything Lefty O'Doul related. Probably one of the most interesting people ever associated with baseball.

The cards that I've got to post today aren't as cool as an old bromide, but old Calbees are nice too.

Isao Shibata was an outfielder for the V9-era Giants. He played for them from 1962 to 1981, from the ages of 18 to 37. Offensively, his game appears to have been built around speed. The 400 career slugging percentage indicates that hitting long balls wasn’t part of the plan. (Fortunately he had Oh and Nagashima in the line up to handle that part of the game.) If I had to guess, I’d say that he was probably the V9’s leadoff hitter. (N.B.: confirmed by B-R.) For his career he put up a 267/347/400 batting line. None of those marks are particularly impressive. His 579 career stolen bases are somewhat better. A cursory internet search doesn’t turn up a list of career leaders, but I’m guessing that that’s third all-time in Japan. Hirose is second all-time, and he’s only about 10 steals ahead of Shibata.

There is, however, a problem with trying to build your career around your feet. The run-value of a stolen base just isn’t very high, and the cost, in terms of expected runs, of getting thrown out stealing, is. Just how proficient you must be at stealing bases for it to be worthwhile depends on the context in which you play. Higher scoring contexts make stealing a riskier bet for two reasons: (1) if you don’t steal, there’s a fair chance that one of the guys behind you will drive you in anyways, and (2) in a high scoring environment, each out is worth a greater amount of runs, so you’re betting more runs on your ability to successfully steal a base than you would be in a low run scoring environment.

The Book goes into this in some detail. They found that as of (IIRC) 2005, in MLB you needed to steal at a 75% success rate in order to break even; that is, if you were getting thrown out more than 25% of the time, then you were costing your team runs by trying to steal. Now, since the context in which Shibata was playing isn’t the same as the context that Tango et al. used to generate data for their calculations, you can’t just import that number over in order to evaluate Shibata. Doing all the calculations for Japan in the sixties and seventies would be a lot of work, and I’m much too lazy to do it. Quickly eyeballing it will give us some idea, however. The 2003 NL scored an average of 4.61 runs per team game, the 1971 Central League (to pick a year from the middle of Shibata’s career) scored 3.23 runs per team game. That’s a big difference. They really weren’t scoring any runs in the Central League in the early 70s. So that’s, what, 25% fewer runs in the Central League than in the leagues Tango was using for his data? So the run value of an out in the context in which Shibata was playing was considerably lower than early 2000s NL. Which means that he would need a success rate of a good bit less than 75% in order for him to contribute value with those stolen bases. And, in fact, Shibata stole bases at exactly a 75% success rate for his career.

In the MLB that would put him tied for 194th for career stolen base percentage. (Tied with, among others, Dustin Pedroia, Brian Dozier, and Michael Young.) Given the higher scoring environment in which these Americans play, they’re not contributing much value with their steal attempts. (Yes, yes, it’s a discretional play, you’re more likely to try it when one run matters and the hitters coming up behind you stink, etc etc. I know. But R/G is even higher now than it was in 2003, and even if it’s discretionary, if you’re below the average break even point, you’re not helping too much.) But given that they were only scoring a bit more than 3 runs per game, Shibata was adding a fair amount of value with his 75% success rate.

Like Kawakami had his red bat, Shibata had his red gloves. The story goes (Japanese Wikipedia page for the source) that when he was practicing with the Dodgers (for a while MLB teams and Japanese teams would do spring training together) he found that he had forgotten his batting gloves. He went next door to a golf club to try to find something that would do, and all they had were red women’s gloves. I don’t know if he continued using golf gloves in place of batting gloves, but red gloves apparently became his trademark.

He was originally drafted as a pitcher. In fact, his initial claim to fame was leading his high school team to a pair of championships at Koshien on the mound. That didn’t last. As a pro, he was terrible. But he had a strong arm, and a transition to the outfield was natural. His Japanese Wikipedia page says that he was Japan’s first switch hitter. (Really? They didn’t have switch hitters until the 1960s?)

Shibata was a 12x all-star and a 4x member of the best nine team. He’s in the top 20 all-time in triples, runs, steals, and walks. Albright considers him to be Japan’s 68th greatest player and thinks that he’s worthy of the hall of fame. I don’t know about how precisely he compares to #s 67 or 69, but I agree that he would be a good fit for the hall of fame. He just isn’t in yet.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

My cards are mid 70s Calbee cards. I think one is from 77 and the other from 76.
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File Type: jpg shibata back.jpg (33.3 KB, 326 views)
File Type: jpg shibata 2.jpg (57.1 KB, 328 views)
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  #212  
Old 08-19-2019, 11:37 AM
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Default Calbee

Quote:
Originally Posted by nat View Post
Love the bromide Adam! I'm a big fan of pretty much anything Lefty O'Doul related. Probably one of the most interesting people ever associated with baseball.

The cards that I've got to post today aren't as cool as an old bromide, but old Calbees are nice too.

Isao Shibata was an outfielder for the V9-era Giants. He played for them from 1962 to 1981, from the ages of 18 to 37. Offensively, his game appears to have been built around speed. The 400 career slugging percentage indicates that hitting long balls wasn’t part of the plan. (Fortunately he had Oh and Nagashima in the line up to handle that part of the game.) If I had to guess, I’d say that he was probably the V9’s leadoff hitter. (N.B.: confirmed by B-R.) For his career he put up a 267/347/400 batting line. None of those marks are particularly impressive. His 579 career stolen bases are somewhat better. A cursory internet search doesn’t turn up a list of career leaders, but I’m guessing that that’s third all-time in Japan. Hirose is second all-time, and he’s only about 10 steals ahead of Shibata.

There is, however, a problem with trying to build your career around your feet. The run-value of a stolen base just isn’t very high, and the cost, in terms of expected runs, of getting thrown out stealing, is. Just how proficient you must be at stealing bases for it to be worthwhile depends on the context in which you play. Higher scoring contexts make stealing a riskier bet for two reasons: (1) if you don’t steal, there’s a fair chance that one of the guys behind you will drive you in anyways, and (2) in a high scoring environment, each out is worth a greater amount of runs, so you’re betting more runs on your ability to successfully steal a base than you would be in a low run scoring environment.

The Book goes into this in some detail. They found that as of (IIRC) 2005, in MLB you needed to steal at a 75% success rate in order to break even; that is, if you were getting thrown out more than 25% of the time, then you were costing your team runs by trying to steal. Now, since the context in which Shibata was playing isn’t the same as the context that Tango et al. used to generate data for their calculations, you can’t just import that number over in order to evaluate Shibata. Doing all the calculations for Japan in the sixties and seventies would be a lot of work, and I’m much too lazy to do it. Quickly eyeballing it will give us some idea, however. The 2003 NL scored an average of 4.61 runs per team game, the 1971 Central League (to pick a year from the middle of Shibata’s career) scored 3.23 runs per team game. That’s a big difference. They really weren’t scoring any runs in the Central League in the early 70s. So that’s, what, 25% fewer runs in the Central League than in the leagues Tango was using for his data? So the run value of an out in the context in which Shibata was playing was considerably lower than early 2000s NL. Which means that he would need a success rate of a good bit less than 75% in order for him to contribute value with those stolen bases. And, in fact, Shibata stole bases at exactly a 75% success rate for his career.

In the MLB that would put him tied for 194th for career stolen base percentage. (Tied with, among others, Dustin Pedroia, Brian Dozier, and Michael Young.) Given the higher scoring environment in which these Americans play, they’re not contributing much value with their steal attempts. (Yes, yes, it’s a discretional play, you’re more likely to try it when one run matters and the hitters coming up behind you stink, etc etc. I know. But R/G is even higher now than it was in 2003, and even if it’s discretionary, if you’re below the average break even point, you’re not helping too much.) But given that they were only scoring a bit more than 3 runs per game, Shibata was adding a fair amount of value with his 75% success rate.

Like Kawakami had his red bat, Shibata had his red gloves. The story goes (Japanese Wikipedia page for the source) that when he was practicing with the Dodgers (for a while MLB teams and Japanese teams would do spring training together) he found that he had forgotten his batting gloves. He went next door to a golf club to try to find something that would do, and all they had were red women’s gloves. I don’t know if he continued using golf gloves in place of batting gloves, but red gloves apparently became his trademark.

He was originally drafted as a pitcher. In fact, his initial claim to fame was leading his high school team to a pair of championships at Koshien on the mound. That didn’t last. As a pro, he was terrible. But he had a strong arm, and a transition to the outfield was natural. His Japanese Wikipedia page says that he was Japan’s first switch hitter. (Really? They didn’t have switch hitters until the 1960s?)

Shibata was a 12x all-star and a 4x member of the best nine team. He’s in the top 20 all-time in triples, runs, steals, and walks. Albright considers him to be Japan’s 68th greatest player and thinks that he’s worthy of the hall of fame. I don’t know about how precisely he compares to #s 67 or 69, but I agree that he would be a good fit for the hall of fame. He just isn’t in yet.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

My cards are mid 70s Calbee cards. I think one is from 77 and the other from 76.
Love this thread. Learning so much. Thought that I would share a few scans of a few Calbee baseball cards from the 1970s that I have in my collection.

First group is from 1973. Three of the cards are of Sadaharu Oh. Not sure who is the other player.

Second group is from 1974. The cards are numbered in English. I believe all three are of Oh.

Third group is from 1975-76. Three of the cards are of Oh, number 1190 is of Harimoto.

Best regards,

Joe
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File Type: jpg 24.jpg (74.6 KB, 322 views)
File Type: jpg 25.jpg (69.7 KB, 321 views)
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  #213  
Old 08-19-2019, 07:58 PM
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Nice cards Joe!

The player other than Oh in your 1973 lot is Tsuneo Horiuchi, a HOF pitcher for the Giants.

With your 1974s two of them are Sadaharu Oh, but one of them (card #20) is Yukinobu Kuroe who also played for the Giants.

One of your 1975-76 Ohs (#789) is from the series commemorating his 700th home run, which is one of the harder series to find in that set.
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  #214  
Old 08-20-2019, 03:44 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by seanofjapan View Post
Nice cards Joe!

The player other than Oh in your 1973 lot is Tsuneo Horiuchi, a HOF pitcher for the Giants.

With your 1974s two of them are Sadaharu Oh, but one of them (card #20) is Yukinobu Kuroe who also played for the Giants.

One of your 1975-76 Ohs (#789) is from the series commemorating his 700th home run, which is one of the harder series to find in that set.
Thanks Sean for the information. I appreciate it.

Best regards,

Joe
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  #215  
Old 08-21-2019, 04:33 PM
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Nice pick up!

Though that isn't actually Giants Manager Mizuhara, the Japanese guy is Shinji Hamazaki (manager of the Braves).
Thanks; my bad.
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  #216  
Old 08-21-2019, 09:33 PM
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Default Atsunori Inaba

If you reversed Atsunori Inaba’s career – made the second half the first half and the first half the second half – it would look pretty normal. He was an outfielder who split his time between Yakult (when he was young) and Nippon Ham (for his second act). As a hitter: he had intermediate power, and on base skills that varied widely during his career. Home runs you’ll get some of, but we’re usually talking teens in the HR department, sometimes into the 20s per year. In the early part of his career he was posting OBPs in the low 300s, rising to the upper 300s in his mid 30s.

That’s part of what would make his career look normal in reverse. He also had much more playing time latter in his career. In large part this seems to have been due to injuries. That a player would be injury plagued as a young man, and not when they’re older, is super weird. One of the best predictors of future injury is past injury, in large measure because there are lots of injuries that never heal quite right. This will lead to more missed time because of a recurrence, or missed time because a player injures himself compensating for the injury that didn’t really heal. Back injuries are notorious for this, but hand/wrist injuries do it to, and so do, to a lesser extent, lots of others. So if a young player is missing a lot of playing time due to injuries, you’d expect him to either continue missing time when he gets older (Eric Chavez, for example), or simply be unable to continue (like Troy Tulowitzki).

Inaba often missed 40 or 50 games per year when he was with Yakult. Sounds a lot like Tulowitzki. And you would expect his career to end about age 30, just like Tulo’s did. (Technically Tulowitzki played until age 34, but he only appeared in five games this year, none last year, and missed most of the year before.) Entirely unexpectedly, Inaba stopped getting hurt and played full seasons from age 31 through 39. It’s really his 30s that make him a great player. If he had followed a more normal career path, he would have been a promising young player who didn’t pan out. He collected his 2000th (and so Meikyukai-qualifying) hit in 2012 while playing for Nippon Ham.

A word about Japanese team names. “Nippon Ham Fighters” is every American’s favorite Japanese team name, because Americans either don’t know or don’t care that ‘Nippon Ham’ is the name of the company that owns the team, and ‘Fighters’ is the name of the team itself. Americans, me included, really like to imagine a baseball team fighting a ham. Or maybe a ham that is itself a fighter. Sadly, that’s not the way that it works. Japanese teams are often referred to by the name of the corporation that owns them, and then their team’s nickname. Or sometimes (as I was doing at the beginning of this post) just by the company name. Because ‘Hankyu and ‘Yomiuri’ aren’t recognizable to Americans, this doesn’t sound too weird. But imagine if MLB had similar naming conventions: The Rodgers Communication Blue Jays, The Liberty Media Braves, I guess ‘The Nintendo of America Mariners’ isn’t as bad as it could be. Imagine saying that Chipper Jones spent his entire career playing third base for Liberty Media (although of course they were called ‘Warner Broadcasting’ during his early days). Imagine rooting for “Yankee Global Enterprises LLC”. (That’s the name of the company that the Steinbrenner family mostly controls that actually owns the Yankees.) The idea is gross. The old joke goes that in the 50s rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for US Steel. What if it was rooting for US Steel?

Back to Inaba. He was a 5x best nine and seven time all-star. His fans have a special cheer for him called the ‘Inaba jump’. Enough people participate that the TV feed from the Sapporo Dome might shake when he comes to bat. He admits to loving potato chips and says that during the off season sometimes he gets fat because he eats too many potato chips and doesn’t work out enough. He says that he likes wearing uniform number 41 because it kind of looks like his initials. For a comparable American player – maybe Hunter Pence? (Except for the weird injury pattern.) Medium range power, unexceptional OBP, let Pence play until he’s in his early 40s and their careers might look similar. Or maybe if Torii Hunter had been a slow corner outfielder instead of a fairly speedy center fielder? Given his number of best-nine selections, however, he clearly had more star power than either of those guys.

After he retired he became the manager of the Japanese national team, and is tasked with leading the team in the 2020 Olympics.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: No

The card is another one from the 2013 BBM Crosswind subset.
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  #217  
Old 08-26-2019, 07:49 PM
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Default Shinichi Eto (again)

Here’s another card of Shinichi Eto.

He was a slugger, primarily for Chunichi, and one of the best players of the 1960s. I mean, not Oh or Nagashima good, but at his best he was really something. In 1969 he got into it with his manager (and fellow hall of famer) Shigeru Mizuhara. Mizuhara was publicly berating the team’s second baseman for muffing a play, and Eto let him have it for being so harsh. This did not go over well. Eto ended up retiring over the incident, but then thought better of it. The Dragons wouldn’t take him back, and dealt him to Lotte for Kazuto Kawabata. Basically, they gave him away for a bag of baseballs. Kawabata was a poor relief pitcher with a short career. In America we would call him a AAAA player. Two years later he was dealt to the Taiyo Whales for Osamu Nomura. Nomura was actually a good pitcher. He was a 4x all-star and had just finished his age 24 season when he was dealt. Basically, Japanese Baseball knew that Eto was still good, it’s just that the Dragons couldn’t accept a player who loudly and publicly stood up to his manager and had to exile him. But his reputation was apparently rehabilitated pretty quickly, because he was traded only two years later for a legitimately good pitcher. For what it’s worth, his run in with Mizuhara over the ground ball seems to have been a last-straw kind of deal – they had run ins before, over, e.g. curfew and paying fines.

For a comparable American player (at least as far as on-the-field stuff goes), I nominate Johnny Mize. Eto spent some time at first base, but was primarily an outfielder, and The Big Cat was pretty much solely a first baseman, but their offensive profiles are similar. Both were power hitters with good on base skills. Mize may have been the better player (seriously: check out Mize from 1937 to 1948. Dude was an absolute beast. He just ran into a cliff immediately after that), but they were both really good.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: Yes

I like this card. It’s from the JCM 55 set. And while the production values on JCM 55 were admittedly pretty low, what I like about it is that Eto is in his catching gear. As a youngster he would catch a few games here and there. In 1962 he was primarily a catcher (>2/3 games played). Then in 1963 he appeared in a few games behind the dish, and after that was strictly a 1B/OF. So this is the only year in which you had a chance to get him on a card wearing catching armor.
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  #218  
Old 08-26-2019, 08:12 PM
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I agree about the JCM 55, I have a few cards from that set (including Eto) and while its correct that the production values were low (as with most cards of the era), the design does make them stick out in a stack of old menko.
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  #219  
Old 08-27-2019, 01:08 PM
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Default identification help

Here are a couple more old cards that I picked up. Comparing the pictures with the other cards I have I'm guessing the guy swinging the bat is Shigeo Nagashima. The player on the left on the multiplayer card also looks like Nagashima, but I have no idea who the other player is.

Any idea of the type of cards? the players? and the years?

Thanks,

Joe
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  #220  
Old 08-27-2019, 08:00 PM
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Nice cards!

The one on the left is indeed Shigeo Nagashima, from the 1958 All Star Awase Trump set (JGA 177).

The one on the right is also Nagashima, along with a player named Yoshio Yoshida, who played for the Tigers (and is also a HOFer). Its from the 1958 Mitsuwa War/playing card set (JCM 129)!
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  #221  
Old 08-29-2019, 08:12 PM
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Default Norihiro Nakamura

Norihiro Nakamura was a standard issue slugger. Usually he’d have unexceptional batting averages (266 for his career), but smack a good number of home runs, topping out at 46 in 2001. As you expect for middle of the order guys, he wasn’t fast: 22 stolen bases for his career. In total he played 23 years and put up a 266/352/469 batting line, to go along with 404 home runs and 2101 hits. The bulk of his career he spent with Kintetsu: 1992 through 2004. Then he defected for the US, spending most of 2005 playing for Las Vegas, the Dodgers’ AAA team. He did play in the majors leagues, but only 17 games, and not well. In Las Vegas he hit 249/331/487. The first two numbers are as bad as they look. That last one looks like it’s healthy, but it isn’t really. The 51s play in the Pacific Coast League, and the PCL plays in some absurd parks. Imagine a league where most of the parks resemble Coors Field. That's the idea. Any PCL numbers have to be taken with huge heaping spoonfuls of salt, Nakamura’s included. That 487 slugging percentage was fourth-best on the team (among those who got regular playing time), trailing the immortals Bryan Myrow (547), Cody Ross (509), Chin-Feng Chen (495). All three of those guys played in the major leagues, but no, I don’t remember them either.*

After not managing to break into MLB, Nakamura returned to Japan, spending 2006 with Orix, and then jumped around for his last few seasons between Chunichi, Rakuten, and Yokohama. He had a couple good seasons left in his mid 30s, but was mostly over the hill after he came back from the US.

Orix decided that his poor play in his first season back in Japan merited a huge reduction in salary (down to about $800k). This did not sit will with Nakamura (understandably: after Ichiro left he had been the highest paid player in Japan), who did not sign the contract and was eventually released. Whether it was officially done or not, he was effectively blackballed the following season, and eventually forced to settle for what was essentially a minor league deal with the Dragons (later changed to a major league deal after he performed well). Although he ended up making much less money than he had turned down from Blue Wave, to some extent it worked out well. The Dragons won the Japan Series and Nakamura took home the series MVP award.

Going to the Dodgers in 2005 was Nakamura’s second attempt to come to the US. A few seasons earlier he had an agreement to join the Mets on a two year, seven million dollar deal. But the deal was announced on the Mets’ website before Nakamura had a chance to inform the Buffaloes about it, and he decided to back out of it and stay in Japan.

Nakamura was a third baseman, and between having good power, playing third, and having a long career, he probably produced quite a lot of value for his teams. Mostly in a compiling sort of way (his peak was there but not very long), but that’s valuable too. I wouldn't be surprised if he's elected to the hall of fame eventually. Superficially his stat line looks a lot like Paul Konerko’s, but there are some really big differences. First, Konerko was playing in some really high-offense environments, second, Konerko was a first baseman, and third, even by first base standards, Konerko was a pretty lousy fielder. So despite their superficial similarity, I’m comfortable saying that Nakamura was much better than Konerko. No comparable American player comes immediately to mind, however. The really good American third basemen either had better on-base skills than Nakamura, or shorter careers.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: No

The card is from a 2000 Upper Deck set. It’s weird. The design is obviously pretty strange, and on top of that it’s an odd size. Most Calbee cards are a little bit smaller than standard baseball cards, and this one is smaller than those. But it’s also larger than the tiny cards that Calbee made in the 80s.

*Just double checked these guys. Apparently Cody Ross had a real major league career. The other two did not. Myrow spent one season in Korea, but then was back to playing the in PCL. He was playing quite well around age 30, he seems like the kind of guy that you expect to try to jump to Japan, actually. Instead he played Indy ball for Grand Prairie through 2015.
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  #222  
Old 09-04-2019, 07:55 PM
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Those cards are kind of interesting.

I remember when Nakamura went over to the US the first time and I just couldn't figure out why. He was an established star here but it was really obvious that he didn't have the skill set needed to do the same in the Majors and would (as he ultimately did) just end up toiling in the minors. I think everyone who knew anything about Japanese baseball at the time was thinking the same and nobody was surprised when he failed to make it.
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  #223  
Old 09-05-2019, 02:29 PM
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Default Choji Murata (for the meikyukai collection)

This is my second post about Choji Murata. (Here’s the first.) I thought I’d take what appears to be his best season (1976) and adjust it to fit the 2019 AL context, to give us a better idea of what he was up to.

In 1976 Murata had a 1.82 ERA, to go with 21 wins and 202 strike outs, in 257 innings pitched. Murata led the league in ERA, IP, and K’s, but did not win the Sawamura award. (The Sawamura award went to Kojiro Ikegaya of the Carp.) He was second in wins.

That year the Pacific League managed a 3.34 ERA and 0.48 K/IP. I don’t know how to get league-wide data for performance as a starter, so I really can’t normalize wins. But I can approximate it with innings pitched. Here's the plan: I'm going to adjust his number of starts for the shorter schedule, and then multiply that number by the average innings per start in the 2019 American League. That will get something like a translation of his innings pitched into the 2019 AL context. If he was pitching more/less than the league average innings per appearance, this figure will be off. I'm going to assume that relief appearances are 1-inning long.

Now, the 2019 AL has an ERA of 4.60 and a K rate of .96 per inning. (Yikes! That’s a lot of strike outs!) Starting pitchers pitch an average of 5.23 innings per start. Maybe bump it up to 5.5 due to openers pulling down the average.

Murata made 24 starts in a season 80% as long as MLB’s. So let’s give him 29 starts. He also made 22 relief appearances, with the season-length adjustment that becomes 26. Call those relief appearances one inning each (just a wild guess on that one). That comes out to an adjusted 186 innings. That’s maybe a bit on the light side, but not unreasonable for a contemporary starter. Blake Snell won the Cy Young award last year with fewer innings pitched than that.

Murata was striking out batters at a rate 40% better than league average. Adjusted to the 2019 AL that comes out to 1.3 K’s per inning, which is extremely good. It’s just about what Justin Verlander does. Over 186 innings that would give him 250 Ks. If you adjust his ERA for the 2019 AL context, you end up with 2.51. There isn’t any way to adjust wins, so here’s what Murata’s 1976 looks like if it happens in the 2019 American League:

186 innings pitched, 250 strikeouts (12 K/9), and a 2.51 ERA.

That ERA would lead the league (by a little bit). The K figures are good but not league leading. The innings pitched are a bit light for a full season, but not very low. He in fact pitched far more innings than that, but that has to do with differences in pitcher usage between the 1976 Pacific League and the 2019 American League. He actually pitched 18 complete games that year, adjusted for context and that becomes, eh, like, 1 or 2. Basically nobody pitches complete games anymore, or even very deep into games. The longer schedule isn’t enough to make up for the reduced workloads. (There’s also the possibility that his relief outings were longer than one inning each.)

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: Yes

These cards are mid-80s Calbee cards. I bought them in a lot, it’s not like I was all like “I already have one boring headshot of Choji Murata, surely need to buy another”.
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  #224  
Old 09-07-2019, 09:07 PM
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Default Takao Kajimoto

Takao Kajimoto is a hall of famer and Meikyukai member who pitched for the Braves. He was featured in one on the earliest posts in this thread (which weren’t very high quality) so I’ll try to do better here.

Kajimoto pitched from 1954 to 1973, compiling a record of 254-255 (that’s right, a losing record). I wonder if that’s the highest number of wins for a pitcher with a losing record? My guess would be “yes”. Wikipedia (Japanese version) says that it is the highest total for anyone to have never led the league in wins, which also sounds plausible. Although he was a 12x all-star, he was selected for just a single best-nine team.

Kajimoto’s father died when he was in middle school, and he was raised by his mother alone thereafter. He was a sensation as a rookie, signing directly out of high school with a 93 mph fastball.

With a rotation led by Kajimoto and Tetsuya Yoneda, Hankyu has something of a golden age in the late 1960s. Unfortunately, they ran into the buzz saw of the V9 Giants, and didn’t manage to win the Japan Series. For a while the Dodgers did a lot of things with various Japanese teams, and in the late 1950s they went to Japan to play against an all-star team. This could have turned out better for Kajimoto. He started the Oct. 31st, 1956 game, and Gino Cimoli hit a line drive that bounced off of Kajimoto’s shoulder (ouch!) and went for a triple.

After he retired Kajimoto spent many years as a coach. His advice to (at least some of his pitchers) was… peculiar. Apparently he recommended drinking before appearing in a game, on the grounds that it worked for him. There’s a reason that anecdotes don’t really count as evidence. #obviouslybadideas.

Kajimoto still holds the record for consecutive batters struck out, at nine. His pitch of choice was something that Google Translate’s version of Kajimoto’s Japanese Wikipedia page is calling a ‘palm ball’, which I gather is a kind of change up. A good change up is a nice thing to have if you can pair it was a blazing fastball. (Or, well, blazing in context. No one is going to be impressed with a 93mph fastball anymore.)

Meikyukai – Yes (he was one of the founding members) : Hall of Fame – Yes

My card is from the JCM 43a set. It’s one of a bunch of almost indistinguishable sets released between c. 1958 and 1960.
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  #225  
Old 09-11-2019, 09:24 PM
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Default Tokuro Ishii

Takuro Ishii played baseball (mostly SS) for 24 seasons, spending most of the time with the same franchise (albeit carrying over through the change from the Taiyo Whales to the Yokohama Bay Stars). His last few years were spent with Hiroshima. Ishii had no power at all, averaging four home runs per year for his career. On the other hand, he was pretty fast, stealing 20-40 bases a year for a long time. Basically what you expect from a shortstop. He played from 1989 to 2012, and collected 2432 hits (this figure is 14th all-time). His 2000th hit came in 2006, and the last few years of his career he was playing part-time. In total he put up a 282/356/372 line. He never was a dangerous hitter exactly, but if you’re playing a good shortstop, that will do.

Curiously, Ishii started his career as a pitcher. He broke in as an 18 year old with the Whales and pitched 30 innings to a 3.56 ERA. His pitching career would be short, however, a total of 49 innings spread over three seasons. By 1993 he was a regular third baseman. (It would be a couple years before he moved to short.) But his start as a pitcher didn’t exactly go smoothly either. He was undrafted out of high school, and didn’t make a pro team until he won a spot at a tryout with the Whales.

Sacrifice hits seem to have been a specialty of his. In both 1993 and 1994 he had 39 of them, which sounds like a very large number to me. The MLB record is 67 by Ray Chapman in 1917. Pretty much all of the top MLB seasons in sac hits are from the deadball era. There are a couple high figures from the early 1920s (old habits die hard). The top figure from after the early 20s is Pie Traynor’s 42 in 1928. Ishii’s 39 would tie him for 50th in MLB history, and remember he did that twice in consecutive seasons. I’m guessing third baseman played pretty far in when they saw him come up to bat.

Although Ishii was fast, he was also reckless, leading the league in times caught stealing during a bunch of seasons.

In total, over his 24 seasons he made six all-star teams and five best-nines. In addition he won four gold gloves awards. Post retirement, he has coached for the Carp, and is currently a coach with the Swallows.

As for a comparable American player: I can’t help but pick Omar Vizquel. They played the same position, they both started their careers in 1989 and retired in 2012, and they both amassed a whole bunch of hits. Vizquel won more gold gloves, but most of those he won on reputation. With the exception of an anomalous 1999, his defensive stats from 1994 to 2001 (all years in which he won the GG) were nothing special. (When he actually was a good fielder was right at the beginning of his career, but he didn’t have the reputation yet and so didn’t win the award.) On the whole, they’re quite similar players.

The Bay Stars released him after something like 20 years. Rather than retire, he signed with the Carp. About this he said:

"There really weren't many [offers]. It was in fact very tough. But in the end it wasn't about money. Rather, I wanted to keep going, I wanted a fresh start. Frankly speaking, baseball is fun."

I like that sentiment.


The card is from the 1993 BBM set.
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  #226  
Old 09-13-2019, 09:11 AM
Northviewcats Northviewcats is offline
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Default Playing Back Cards

Here are some 1958 JCM23 Playing Card Back cards that I picked up. Any help identifying the players is appreciated.

Best regards,

Joe
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  #227  
Old 09-14-2019, 08:06 PM
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Hi Joe,

You've got the set wrong. Those aren't JCM 23 they're JGA 21. They were produced by the Shonen Magazine. The year on the set is 1961.

The ace of spades is Kazuto Tsuruoka (aka Yamamoto). He was briefly a very good player, and is in the hall of fame for his work as a manager of the Nankai Hawks.

The queen of spades is Tadashi Sugiura, a hall of fame pitcher.

Jack of diamonds is Futushi Nakanishi, a hall of famer (played 3B). He was superbly great when he was young (and married his manager's daughter) but tailed off towards the end of his career. He played for the Lions.

Six of diamonds is Noboru Akiyama. He was a hall of fame pitcher for the Taiyo Whales. He had his moments, but on the whole - largely due to a short career - he's one of the weaker members of the hall of fame.
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  #228  
Old 09-14-2019, 08:18 PM
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Default Harayasu Nakajima

Haruyasu Nakajima was a star in the early days of Japanese pro ball. He played with the Giants (through several incarnations) from 1936 through 1949, and spent the last couple years of his career with Taiyo. An outfielder, he posted a career line of 270/324/393, managing 897 hits, 57 home runs, and 103 stolen bases over the course of his career. Remember that in early Japanese baseball, very few runs were scored. His best season was probably the fall season of 1938. The league as a whole hit 219/319/293. Only 110 home runs were hit in the whole league that season, 22 of them by the Kyojin. Get this: in that league, Nakajima hit 361/428/626, and bashed out ten home runs. That’s completely nuts, and it was Japan’s first triple crown. He hit almost 50% of his team’s home runs that year, and, what, like, 9% of the home runs in the entire league. (You actually just couldn’t do this anymore. To do that in the 2019 American League – to this point in the season – you would need to hit 286 home runs.) Nakajima’s slugging percentage that season was more than double the league average. I decided to check out Babe Ruth real quick. In 1918 (so this is still during the deadball era) he slugged 555 against a league average of 322. In 1919 he slugged 657 and the league mark was 359. Neither of those seasons matched Nakajima’s feat. His best season – as far as raw slugging percentage goes – was 1920, when he slugged 847 and the league managed 387. Okay, so Ruth did manage to double the league mark for slugging percentage. But that’s what we need to compare Nakajima’s fall 1938 season to: perhaps the best season of Babe Ruth’s career. (By WAR Ruth’s best season is 1923, but that’s being propped up by an anomalous 19 runs saved in the field.) As you might have surmised, power was Nakajima’s calling card. In fact, he hit the first home run in Giants’ history (off of Tadashi Wakabayashi).

Nakajima didn’t have the consistency that Ruth did, but at his best he was Ruthian in his performance. Japan didn’t go to a single season each year (as opposed to split between fall and spring seasons) until 1940, when Nakajima was 30 years old. His batting average and on-base percentage were better than average that year, but his slugging percentage was still excellent, about 50% higher than average. That’s quite a drop-off from his Ruthian heights, but he was still hitting roughly like (this year’s version of) George Springer.

Then the war came calling. His 1943 season was abbreviated, whether that was due to injury or enlistment I don’t know. But he lost his entire 1944 and 1945 seasons to the war. When he came back he was 36 years old, and not at the top of his game anymore. In 1946 he was a little below average in the on-base department, and a little above average in the slugging department. My guess (and this is only a guess) as to what happened: he found that he was old and out of practice, and started selling out for power. Guessing on fastballs and trying to pull things. That would explain a precipitous drop in BA/OBP and a still-healthy SLG.

By 1947 he was genuinely bad, but at this point he had been relegated to a part-time role anyhow, probably at his own choosing, since he took over as manager of the Giants in 1946. Nakajima’s managerial career was brief, 1943 with the Giants, continuing after the war through 47. They got a slow start to the season and he was relieved of his duties, only to take the top spot again in 1949. But that didn’t last. He managed a partial season in 1949, and then another partial season with the Whales in 1951. Under Nakajima’s leadership the Giants were good and the Whales were not. About what you expect. I don’t know about his other managerial abilities, but he seems to have been a good judge of talent. Tetsuharu Kawakami was originally moved from pitcher to first base at his suggestion, and he, together with Shigeru Mizuhara, scouted Takahiko Bessho for the Giants. (They didn't manage to sign him - he went to Nankai instead.)

The professional part of Nakajima’s career was in fact only the fourth act of his life in baseball. In 1928 he led his high school team to victory at Koshien. Afterwards he starred at Waseda, playing for one of Japan’s most storied university baseball teams. At the time, baseball at the Big Six universities was the highest caliber baseball in Japan. After he graduated he played in the industrial leagues (which pre-date genuinely professional baseball in Japan). He then joined the Giants as soon as that was an option.

The other player on the card is Kikuji Hirayama. He’s the one throwing on the left, Nakajima is standing on the right. Hirayama is not in the hall of fame, but was a pretty good outfielder in his own right, playing for the Giants from 1937 to 1949, and then leaving with Nakajima for the Whales. There’s a nice write-up about him on Noburo Aota’s Fan Notes.

Meikyukai – No : Hall of Fame – Yes

The card is an uncatalogued bromide. The back has the players’ names, but nothing else. (Unless, that is, you count damage due to being removed from a scrap book.) The condition of this card is obviously terrible, and I’d be happy to upgrade it at some point. Since both players featured left the Giants after 1949, this card must be a late 40s issue.

Nakajima is not a meikyukai member (his disqualification is over determined, he has neither enough hits nor the right birthday), but he is in the hall of fame. In fact, he was the third player ever elected. This card does, therefore, contribute to my hall of fame project. I just need three more cards at this point.
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  #229  
Old 09-18-2019, 10:43 PM
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This card does, therefore, contribute to my hall of fame project. I just need three more cards at this point.
Wow, getting that close!

I can guess that Eiji Sawamura would be one of the three, who are the other two?
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  #230  
Old 09-19-2019, 11:43 AM
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As far as anybody knows, no cards of Sawamura were ever made, so I'm not counting him. I'm also not counting guys who only played pre-war. Some of those guys have cards (others don't) but they're very rare and expensive. When I set out on this project I didn't know anything about Japanese cards and wasn't really up for tracking down rare and expensive ones, so while I'd like to get them, I didn't include them on the list. I've also included some but not all of the managers. Everyone who is in the hall as a manager, and who also had a long and successful career as a player (think the Japanese version of Joe Torre) is included, but only some of the managers who didn't have much of a pro career themselves are included. Obviously there is an element of arbitrariness to the parameters of my project.

Anyways, as to your question Sean:

As of yesterday the list of missing players is down to two. Sotokoba was one of the missing guys, and I got a letter from a certain friend in Japan () with a Sotokoba card in it. Many thanks. The other two players are Sadao Kondo and Mutsuo Minagawa. But I've got a lead on both of them, so I'm going to be done pretty soon.
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  #231  
Old 09-19-2019, 01:57 PM
Rickyy Rickyy is offline
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My policy is that I get a copy of a player's card for each collection that he's a part of. Hall of fame collection =/= meikyukai collection, so I need a second card for each player who is a member of both.

Hence today's post.

Masaji Hiramatsu was a great pitcher for the Whales. I said rather more about him in the piece just linked than I will say here.

Hiramatsu was elected to the hall of fame by the experts committee - which has jurisdiction over players who have been retired for at least 21 years. Sounds a lot like the Veteran's Committee here. There is also a player's committee, which is basically a guy's first shot at election, and special committees that elect umpires, guys who published baseball's rule book (I'm not kidding, check out Mirei Suzuki), and so on.

Japanese starters have always pitched more in relief than American starters do, but here's a fun fact about Hiramatsu: he has almost exactly the same number of complete games as games finished. 145/146, respectively.

One thing that I find curious about Japanese baseball is how seriously they take the Koshien tournament. It's the high school baseball championship, and it's a huge deal. This comes to mind at the moment because Hiramatsu's team won the tournament, and whenever someone is writing about him that fact always gets mentioned right next to the fact that he won the Sawamura Award, which, to an American mind, would seem to be a much bigger deal.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of fame: Yes

Round menkos are best known for dominating the early post-war menko scene. Basically, menko cards from the late 1940s to early 1950s are either round or relatively narrow pillars. There are many sets of each, but the round sets tend, in my observation, to be more common. Round menko cards (of baseball players at least) then disappeared for a couple decades. There was a sort of mini-revival in the 1970s. This card is from the JRM 10 set, issued in 1976. It's a common and inexpensive set (I paid more for shipping on this card than I did for the card itself).
I saw him pitch against the Giants when I lived as a kid in Japan. Famous as you mentioned in the original link.... shuuto pitch. It was often called Kamisori shhuto (like Japanese razor blade).

Ricky Y
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  #232  
Old 09-19-2019, 08:37 PM
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Default Kaz Matsui

I’ll do a write-up for Sotokoba in a while, but for now I’ve already got a picture of this Matsui card on my computer, so I'm going to do him first.

Japanese imports into the American game have a not-very-distinguished track record. Some of the pitchers have done reasonably well (I was just watching Tanaka pitch a nice game for the Yankees a little bit ago), but the hitters have had more trouble. (With one very notable exception, about whom more later.) Here are the top Japanese-born position players to play in MLB (Dave Roberts omitted), ordered by total WAR:

59 : Ichiro
21 : Hideki Matsui
10 : Nori Aoki
6 : Tadahiko Iguchi
6 : Shohei Ohtani (and counting, but of course he’s also a pitcher)
5 : Kenji Johjima
5 : Kaz Matsui
5 : Akanori Iwakuma
4 : Kosuke Fukudome
4 : Tsuyoshi Shinjo
…and then a bunch of guys who basically made no impact in MLB.

So of the position players to come over from Japan to MLB, Matsui had the seventh best MLB career. A league average season is worth about two WAR, so Matsui’s MLB career was about equal to two and a half average seasons. He missed a lot of time in MLB with injuries. In 2004 he played 114 games for the Mets, on his way to a season worth 1 WAR.

(This figured pulled down by poor fielding. His oWAR – the offensive component – was worth 1.7 WAR. His fielding in 2004 was worth negative value. And while I’ve got a parenthetical note going: WAR is not oWAR plus dWAR; both the o- and d- components include a positional adjustment. If you want to break WAR down into components you need to add oWAR and Rfield/10.)

In 2007 with the Rockies and 2009 with the Astros he also eclipsed the 100 games played mark, but that was all. That 2007 season was the best of his MLB career. It was worth 3.7 WAR. Maybe not all-star caliber, but still above average. The rest of his career is about what you would expect from a bench player. He did play in the 2007 post season, mashing in the NLDS and then squeezing out just nine hits (and one walk) in the NLCS and World Series combined.

The poor showing in the field as a rookie is actually rather odd. The only thing that he was (in total) quite good at in MLB was fielding. In two of his three full seasons he led the league in range factor for a second baseman, and in 2007 also led the league in Total Zone Runs (as a second baseman).

Matsui’s MLB career is, however, only a small part of his baseball career. He broke in with Seibu in 1995 as a 19 year old. He was a middle infielder who was fast as a young man and developed into a rather complete player as he got older. In 2003, as a 27 year old, Matsui hit 33 home runs. That off season, he signed with the Mets. Now the only year in which he spent a significant amount of time in the minor leagues was 2010. By and large, he spent his time in the US in the big leagues. It’s just that most of it was spent on the disabled list. In 2011 he returned to Japan, signing with the Golden Eagles. By this point he was 36 and had lost both his speed and his power. He spent his late 30s as a doubles kind of hitter. The final year of his career was 2018; he went home to the Lions. It looks like his Meikyukai-qualifying hit came in 2015 with Ratuken.

In sum, across every level in every country that he played, Matsui managed to collect 2843 hits. That’s really good. I wonder how well he would have done had he stayed in Japan? He was averaging about 175 hits per year for Seibu in his 20s. If we’re trying to guesstimate how many hits he would have had in Japan, we need to subtract the 615 he actually got MLB and the 136 he got in MiLB and then extrapolate what he would have managed in those years from what he actually did in Japan. Here’s the way-too-simple way in which I’m going to do that. I’m going to take his average number of hits for the last few years that he played for Seibu, and the average number of hits that he collected in his first few years back with Ratuken, and assume a linear connection between the two. Let’s do it…

[math is done]

If I did this right, that would have given him 1008 hits in Japan during the seasons in which he actually played in MLB. That gives us a net difference of 257. Add that to his hit total and he comes out with 3100 total hits. That would be #1 all-time in Japan. Of course there are tons of assumptions built into that little exercise. But it’s at least not unreasonable to think that he could have surpassed Harimoto had he stayed in Japan.

Meikyukai – Yes : Hall of Fame: No


This card is from BBM’s 2000 set.
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  #233  
Old 09-19-2019, 11:23 PM
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As of yesterday the list of missing players is down to two. Sotokoba was one of the missing guys, and I got a letter from a certain friend in Japan () with a Sotokoba card in it. Many thanks. The other two players are Sadao Kondo and Mutsuo Minagawa. But I've got a lead on both of them, so I'm going to be done pretty soon.
Oh awesome, glad they arrived!!!

And I feel kind of stupid asking that question forgetting that one of the ones you needed was the card I had just sent you!
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  #234  
Old 09-21-2019, 10:11 PM
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Default Yoshiro Sotokoba

Yoshiro Sotokoba pitched for the Carp from 1965 to 1979. Some of those were some pretty abbreviated seasons though. His full-time work was just 1968 to 1976. Quite short for a hall of famer. In total he logged about 2400 innings with a 2.88 ERA. His best season was almost certainly his first as a full-time pitcher. In 1968 he threw 302 innings and posted a 1.93 ERA (this figure led the league). Historically the Carp have been a bad team, and it shows in the win/loss records of their pitchers. Including Sotokoba. For his career he’s got a 131-138 record. To their credit, the Japanese voters didn’t let the losing record discourage them from inducting him into the hall of fame. But that a pitcher with a sub-3 ERA for his career has a losing record really tells you something about his team. (They went 25 years without a pennant. Not Cubs territory exactly, but pretty rough, especially considering the fact that the league is smaller.)

I wonder what the American electorate would do with an otherwise-qualified hall of fame candidate who had a losing record? It’s hard to know, since there’s never been such a creature. They did give Felix Hernandez a Cy Young award despite having only 13 wins. But he did, at least, have a winning record.

Anyways, as was long common for Japanese pitchers, Sotokoba did a lot of pitching in relief in between his starts. He finished 86 games (Japan seems not to have recognized saves as a statistic until 1974, so we don’t really know what kind of games he was finishing), and in total seems to have made about 120 relief appearances.

Sotokoba’s biggest claim to fame is his no hitters. In fact, his very first win was a no hitter. Three years later (so 1968), he threw a perfect game against the Whales. In 1970 he tossed his third and final no hitter (over the Giants). This feat equaled Eiji Sawamura’s record. There have been 93 no hitters in Japan’s history (regular season only, and counting combined no hitters), so Sotokoba is responsible for something in the neighborhood of 4% of them.

Japan doesn’t have many pitchers that have thrown multiple no hitters. Hiroshi Nakao threw two of them, so did Hideo Fujimoto, Juzo Sanada, Masaichi Kaneda, and Keishi Suzuki. Everyone else who has thrown a no hitter managed only one. (source)

Although I think that 1968 was his best season, it was in 1975, toward the end of his career, that Sotokoba won the Sawamura award. He pitched a tremendous number of innings, and so led the league in most of the counting stats. The Carp were, unusually for them, also good this year. They made a very unusual appearance in the Japan Series, but lost to the Braves.

Meikyukai – No : Hall of Fame – Yes

One down, two to go.

1976 Calbee.
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Last edited by nat; 09-24-2019 at 09:26 PM.
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  #235  
Old 09-24-2019, 09:29 PM
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Default Tsuneo Horiuchi (2)

This is post #2 about Tsuneo Horiuchi. He was the Giants ace from the mid 1960s. Many Japanese pitchers crumple under frankly insane workloads. Horiuchi’s workload was more reasonable than many (no 400 inning seasons for instance), but he was pitching full-time while he was still just 18, and was done as a full-time starter after his age 30 season. He finished with 203 wins, and qualified for the Meikyukai with his 200th win in 1980.

Horiuchi won the 1966 and 1972 Sawamura awards. (Baseball-reference says that he also won in 1974, but that appears to be an error.) In 72 he was also the MVP. In 1966 he was a young phenom, going 16-2 with a 1.39 ERA in 181 innings pitched as an 18 year old. His second win may not have been quite as exciting, but it was probably a more valuable season. He had a record of 26-9 to go with a 2.91 ERA in 312 innings.

Meikyukai – Yes : Hall of fame: Yes

1976 Calbee
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  #236  
Old 09-28-2019, 09:39 PM
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Default Shinnosuke Abe

Shinnosuke Abe is the Giants’ first baseman. He’s been with them since 2001 when he broke in as a 22 year old catcher. Most of his career has been spent behind the plate, but he’s getting older and has transitioned to first in the past few years. And he’s still good. This season he’s got a 297/406/465 batting line. That would be a lot more impressive if he was still a catcher, but still, every one of those figures is considerably better than average. Abe’s best season, well, it’s hard to say. In 2010 he hit 281/368/608 with 44 home runs. One hell of a line for a catcher. On the other hand, his 2012 and 2013 seasons were also excellent and were pretty much identical, at least as far as total batting value is concerned. 340/429/565 in 2012, 296/427/564 in 2013. Of course the batting average in 2012 was a lot higher, and since he’s never been a 340 kind of hitter before I’m guessing that he got lucky with some balls in play. Anyway, he made up for it the following season with an improved batting eye. Upon reflection, the 2012/2013 seasons were probably better than 2010. A point of on base percentage is worth more, in terms of expected runs, than is a point in slugging percentage, but I’m certainly not going to complain about a catcher who slugs 600. That 2012 season earned him a nearly unanimous MVP award.

Abe qualified for the Meikyukai in 2017, and while his playing time has decreased the past couple years, he still got into 93 games this year. He joked that although many people have 2000 hits, he’s so slow that no one in the Meikyukai has fewer infield hits than he does.

It turns out that Abe’s hit total is complete at 2131, as is his home run total, 405. Last Wednesday he announced that this would be his final season. Which means that yesterday’s game was his final regular season game with the Giants.

Abe was a 9x best-nine and 4x gold glove winner. It’s often hard to find comparable American players, but in Abe’s case it’s easy, at least if you ignore the gold gloves. This guy is Mike Piazza.

Here’s a story about Abe’s final game.

“I like baseball more than anyone” he said during his retirement press conference.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: Eventually

The card is from the 2013 BBM set.
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  #237  
Old 10-03-2019, 08:38 PM
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Default Morimichi Takagi (2)

This is my second post about Morimichi Takagi. (Here’s number one.)

Takagi qualified for the Meikyukai in 1978. He has a total of 2274 hits, all of them with the Dragons. I don’t know what their record is, but I’m guessing that’s up there. While he was a 7x best nine, he was oddly named to the all-star team only four times. Maybe he doesn’t like cold weather and so got better as the season progressed?

As a freshman in high school Takagi was a pitcher, but Shigeo Nagashima – then at Rikkyu University – was coaching high school players, and suggested to his manager that Takagi be converted to an infielder. His high school team would go on to play in Koshien, and made it to the final round in 1959, but ended up losing the tournament.

In 1968 he was hit in the face with a pitch by Tsuneo Horiuchi (see two posts above this one) and was seriously injured. His batting average dropped considerably thereafter, through what should have been his peak seasons. He had been hitting 290-300, but settled in around 230-250 for the next several seasons. He retired in 1980, due to declining vision. (No word on whether it was related to the beaning.)

In addition to being a great offensive force, Takagi was known for his slick fielding. He holds Japan’s record for range factor at 2B. Range factor is certainly a crude tool, and I wouldn’t want to dub someone a great fielder based solely on their range factor. But despite being crude, if you’ve got limited information (like I’ve got about Japanese fielding), it’s not bad exactly. Given that he’s the all-time leader, I’m confident at least in saying that he was a good defensive second baseman.

Meikyukai – Yes : Hall of Fame – Yes

1976 Calbee.
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Last edited by nat; 11-26-2019 at 09:16 PM.
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  #238  
Old 10-03-2019, 09:12 PM
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Nice card

Takagi also managed the Dragons a few years ago, he took over from Hiromitsu Ochiai so had pretty big shoes to fill.
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  #239  
Old 10-05-2019, 08:32 PM
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Default Shinya Miyamoto

Shinya Miyamoto was Yakult’s shortstop (and sometimes third baseman) from 1995 to 2013. He qualified for Meikyukai as a 41 year old, in 2012, and finished his career with 2133 hits. In total, he posted a slash line of 285/329/350. That should tell you a lot about him. Somewhat surprisingly, for a shortstop with no power, he also had very little speed. For his career he stole 111 bases, which works out to an average of about five or six per year.

Do you remember Placido Polanco? Polanco put up a slash line of 297/343/397, despite playing the first part of his career during MLB’s silly ball era. (Actually, his career almost perfectly overlaps Miyamoto; Polanco played from 1998 to 2013.) Seemingly every year in the 2000s, my fantasy baseball team would manage to be short an infielder, and so I somehow always ended up with Placido Polanco. Polanco could do exactly one thing well (that was relevant to fantasy baseball), he could hit for a good batting average. Other than that – nothing. Zero power, zero speed. Polanco moved around the diamond a bit more than did Miyamoto, but in a lot of ways, these guys are twins. They were active during basically the same time. Miyamoto picked up nine more hits than did Polanco. Polanco’s batting average was a bit higher than was Miyamoto (it took him 200 more games to get those extra nine hits), but batting average was the best part of Miyamoto’s offensive game, just like it was for Polanco. Neither had any power. Miyamoto didn’t even hit doubles, not really. Polanco was a little bit better at drawing walks – he had 30 more of them in 200 fewer games.

Now, focusing on his offense would really be beside the point in a discussion of Miyamoto’s baseball career. This man was a shortstop, back when that meant something. He won nine gold gloves. And while I don’t have fielding statistics for Japan, I assume that a guy who wins nine gold gloves must have been really good out there. Thing is, Polanco was also a really good fielder. He won a pair of gold gloves, and while the years in which he won them were not his best fielding years, he did have some seasons in which he was really sharp with the glove. In 2001 he recorded 23 rField (that’s expected runs saved through fielding) which is better than Ozzie Smith’s second-best season. (In his best season Ozzie saved an incredible 32 runs.) Now, that was far and away Polanco’s best fielding season, but the point is that he was a really sharp fielder.

Miyamoto had notable pedigree in baseball. Yoshio Yoshida was his coach when he was a youngster, and in high school he won at Koshien. (With PL Gakuen, the baseball powerhouse that also featured Kazuhiro Kiyohara.) He did not, however, go straight to the pros after college, playing in the industrial leagues first.

In the late 1990s he was convicted of tax evasion, and was sentenced to ten months in prison along with a lengthy probationary period and a fine of 3.5 million yen.

After retiring he was a baseball commentator for a while, before coaching Yakult. And in 2018 he took over the field manager position with them.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

2002 BBM.
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  #240  
Old 10-12-2019, 11:01 AM
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Default Hisashi Yamada (2)

I don't have time to write substantive posts at the moment, and don't know when I will. So for now at least I'll post guys in the Meikyukai that are also in the hall of fame. (And so for whom I already did a post.)

Here's Hisashi Yamada. Long-time submarine pitcher for the Braves and 3x MVP winner.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame - Yes

1984 Calbee
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  #241  
Old 10-19-2019, 03:11 PM
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Default Kaz Sasaki

Kazuhiro Sasaki is one of the few relief pitchers in the Meikyukai. (Off the top of my head, I can't think of any others. But I'm sure that I'm forgetting someone.) I've written about him before.

Sasaki, as you may recall, played for the Mariners from 2000-2003. He was pretty good. (138 ERA+, 3.7 WAR in 220 innings) This card is from the 1998 Calbee set, in 1998 Sasaki was at the height of his powers in Japan.

Word is that 1998 is the first of the really common Calbee sets. And that seems to check out. In my experience 1998-and-later Calbees are almost as common as BBM cards, which means that they're common. Whereas earlier Calbee cards are a hit-or-miss affair. I don't know why that is.
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  #242  
Old 10-23-2019, 11:14 AM
Northviewcats Northviewcats is offline
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Default Selling Japanese Collection

Normally I would post this on the BST. But I am pretty sure that the only interest will be in the members that regularly visit this thread.

I truly admire the passion that you have for Japanese baseball cards. I had hoped to share the enthusiasm, by building a collection of my own. But I am struggling to hold interest in the project mainly because I cannot read Japanese.

I have decided to try and sell my small Japanese collection in the coming months.

However, if anyone here is interested in any of the cards that I posted in this thread I would like to give you first crack at adding them to your collection. Feel free to contact me through PM.

Thanks for all your help identifying the players and sharing your knowledge of baseball in Japan.

Best regards,

Joe
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  #243  
Old 10-30-2019, 05:17 PM
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Default Kimiyasu Kudo (part 2)

Kimiyasu Kudo is a member of both the hall of fame and the Meikyukai. Among his career highlights, he:
  • played in 29 seasons
  • played in 14 Japan Series
  • won the Japan Series 10 times
  • was a 2x Japan Series MVP
  • was a 2x Pacific League MVP
  • was an 8x all-star
  • won 3 gold gloves

He's a southpaw who pitched for the Lions from 1982 to 1994, the Hawks from 1995 to 1999, the Giants from 2000 to 2006, the BayStars from 2007 to 2009, and then finished with another stint on the Lions in 2010.

The card is from 2002 BBM. Presumably a subset of some kind. I like the front of this one better than most modern card designs. Which, granted, is a low bar, but still, it's pretty good. I also appreciate it that the card is printed on nice and sturdy stock. You'd think it wouldn't matter, but I much prefer a card with a little heft to it. (Long live Goudeys. Those things are basically hockey pucks.)
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  #244  
Old 11-07-2019, 09:40 PM
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Default Kazahiro Yamauchi Revisted

Kazahiro Yamauchi is a guy to whom I was unfair in my first write-up. I compared him to Duke Snider. And, while being compared to a legitimate hall of famer isn't very harsh criticism, Yamauchi was, in his game, a greater player than was Snider. Superficially their statistics look pretty similar, but in context they're not.

Yamauchi was a 13x all-star (that's from baseball-reference, his Japanese Wikipedia page says 16x), 10x best-nine, and the 1960 MVP. He was the first Japanese player to reach 300 home runs, and the second to get to 2000 hits. When he retired he was the all-time leader in doubles. (Since he was the first to 300 home runs, he must have been the all-time home run leader at some point.) He still ranks in the top ten in some offensive categories, and top twenty in many.

As near as I can tell, he led the league in doubles four times and home runs twice. Looks like he was also a 4x RBI leader, took home one batting title, led the league in OBP 4x, and slugging 3x.

Yeah, so the Duke Snider comp was wrong. He's more like Frank Robinson.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: Yes

This is my first gum card. Engel calls the set "Lili" gum. The guy that I bought it from (who is Japanese) calls it "Lilly" gum. Now, I don't doubt that 'Lili' is the correct transliteration of the Japanese symbols, but I wonder how it's pronounced. Is it supposed to be an importation of the English word for the flower (even if it's not spelled that way)? On the back it gives the name of the company as リリー. The former symbols have a 'ri' sound. The latter extends a vowel (if I remember my high school Japanese classes).

The card itself is tiny. It's printed on thick cardboard, but it's less than one inch on a side. Maybe packaged with a single piece of gum? It's got a designation of R3 - meaning you aren't likely to run into very many of them. Now, it may just be the very limited number of suppliers that I've got to buy Japanese cards from, but in my experience gum cards are much harder to find than menko cards of corresponding rarities. The guy that I bought this from had several Lili cards for sale, but that was the first (and so far only) time that I've ever encountered them.
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Last edited by nat; 11-14-2019 at 07:59 PM.
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  #245  
Old 11-14-2019, 08:16 PM
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Default Sadao Kondo

Sadao Kondo has the peculiar, and dubious, distinction of having been elected to the hall of fame for doing something that isn’t worth getting elected to the hall of fame for, and—and here’s the real kicker—not even do it.

Kondo pitched for three teams from 1943 to 1954. As a 17 year old rookie he was basically a league average pitcher over 114 innings for Nishitetsu. The next year found him on the Kyojin in an abbreviated season. After the war he returned to them to have a really good year; he had an ERA almost 50% better than average and pitched 300 innings. They finished second, but they had a heck of a pitching staff. Kondo was 20 years old and their best pitcher, but fellow hall of famers Hideo Fujimoto and Hiroshi Nakao rounded out the rotation. Actually, it’s hard to believe they didn’t win the pennant. Their line up featured Kawakami at first, Chiba at second, and Haruyasu Nakajima put in 50ish games in the outfield. They fell one game short, finishing behind a Great Ring team led by Takehiko Bessho and Kazuto Tsuruoka. After what I presume was an injury-shortened season with the Giants he was off to Chunichi, with whom he spent the rest of his playing career. Kondo posted three seasons in which he was somewhat better than average, and after that his playing time diminished precipitously. He was basically done as a full-time pitcher after his age 24 season.

Kondo’s second act was as a manager. In 1967 he took over Chunichi on a very temporary basis, but was back in the helm starting in 1981. His tenure there lasted three seasons. The Dragons were, on balance, about average. 1985 and 86 saw him leading Taiyo, and then he spent three seasons with Nippon Ham starting in 1989.

What got Kondo into the hall of fame is the dedicated use of relief specialists, especially via his influence as a pitching coach for the Dragons in the 1960s, before he moved into the top job. In the early days (and, in fact, quite a long while after the early days) it was very common for pitchers to pitch an insane number of innings as a starter, and appear as a relief pitcher between their starts. Sometime around the 1960s this began to change, and pitchers started specializing as either starters or relievers, but the dual role for key pitchers lasted for a very long time. Jim Allen has a nice post explaining Kondo’s contribution to this development, and the extent to which it wasn’t really his contribution. The gist of it is that under his direction Eiji Bando began transitioning into a relief pitcher, and that Kondo is known for encouraging this. But, Allen points out, he wasn’t the first pitcher to become a (more-or-less) dedicated relief pitcher, and that a number of Kazuto Tsuruoka’s pitchers beat him to it.

Albright ranks him as Japan’s 24th most successful manager. Now, I don’t think much of the kind of system that Albright uses (score X points for doing Y, Z points for…, without any rationale for why those actions merit those scores), but it might give you the general idea of how Kondo compares to other managers in Japanese history.

Meikyukai: No - Hall of Fame: Yes

Of all of the players on my list, Kondo may have been the hardest to find. Prestige has a Kondo card up for auction right now (current bid is $44 and the auction ends the day after tomorrow), and in their blurb they say that he’s got only three catalogued cards, all of which are scarce. The card that I’ve got here is uncatalogued, and, in fact, was only the second Kondo card that I’ve ever seen. It’s a very small bromide. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1x2, but I do like the image. Whatever that is in the background makes for a dramatic backdrop.

As for when the card was issued: he’s on the Dragons, so that puts it after 1947. Now, he put in only three full-time seasons, so I’m guessing it was issued during that period. So probably 1948-1950, which is just about exactly when you would expect a bromide like this to be issued.

Regarding uncatalogued cards: I wonder how rare they are. There's certainly some variation. I have an uncatalogued Fumio Fujimura bromide of which I've seen three other copies, so even if it's not in Engel's book, there must be a bunch of them out there. On the other hand, for most of my uncatalogued cards (such as this one) not only have I never seen another copy, I've never seen another card from the set. I'm guessing that these ones don't turn up much.

Only one player left for the hall of fame collection. Stay tuned.
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  #246  
Old 11-17-2019, 06:44 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nat View Post

Of all of the players on my list, Kondo may have been the hardest to find. Prestige has a Kondo card up for auction right now (current bid is $44 and the auction ends the day after tomorrow), and in their blurb they say that he’s got only three catalogued cards, all of which are scarce. The card that I’ve got here is uncatalogued, and, in fact, was only the second Kondo card that I’ve ever seen. It’s a very small bromide. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1x2, but I do like the image. Whatever that is in the background makes for a dramatic backdrop.

As for when the card was issued: he’s on the Dragons, so that puts it after 1947. Now, he put in only three full-time seasons, so I’m guessing it was issued during that period. So probably 1948-1950, which is just about exactly when you would expect a bromide like this to be issued.

Regarding uncatalogued cards: I wonder how rare they are. There's certainly some variation. I have an uncatalogued Fumio Fujimura bromide of which I've seen three other copies, so even if it's not in Engel's book, there must be a bunch of them out there. On the other hand, for most of my uncatalogued cards (such as this one) not only have I never seen another copy, I've never seen another card from the set. I'm guessing that these ones don't turn up much.

Only one player left for the hall of fame collection. Stay tuned.
Great write up about Kondo. I saw that Prestige auction for the Kondo card ended at 61$, not bad (I don't have any card of his....)! The scarcity of his cards really reflects the effect of having almost all the card sets of the 50s and 60s having less than 40 cards each, so anyone lower than superstar level doesn't have many/any. Then of course even with the massive Calbee sets in the 70s they were still stocking it with stars/Giants players so even the gigantic 1472 card 75-76-77 monster set is missing a lot of players who were active in those years....

That is an interesting point about the uncatalogued cards too. I have a few menko that are uncatalogued and while some of them seem rare (like you I haven't seen any other cards from the same set), some seem more common but for whatever reason (not having a full checklist, difficulty in ascertaining which cards belong to the same set, etc) just aren't in the catalogue yet!
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Last edited by seanofjapan; 11-17-2019 at 06:45 PM.
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  #247  
Old 11-22-2019, 07:58 PM
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Default oops

I thought I was done.

In fact, I was pretty sure that I was done.

And now I'm pretty sure that I'm not.

Mutsuo Minagawa was the last player on my list.

Here's the card that I tracked down. It's of someone named 'Minagawa', so there's that. Now, vintage Japanese cards usually (always?) omit first names, so sometimes figuring out who you've got requires a little detective work, but it's often sufficient to figure out which team the guy is playing for. Mutsuo Minagawa spent his entire career with Nankai. There were only two Minagawas active during the period in which bromides were issued. The top line of kanji on this card says "Tokyo vs. Nankai". So I thought "great! I've got him!" And proceeded to buy the card. On top of it, I was excited because it's a really great action shot. Minagawa is sliding into home plate just ahead of the catcher's tag.

I realized yesterday that the other Minagawa played for the Flyers. The TOKYO Flyers.

Mutsuo was active 1954 to 1971. Sadayuki Minagawa played 1937 to 1951. While it's possible for a player to appear on a bromide in the mid 1950s, they were much more popular in the late 40 - early 50s era. And Mutsuo played sparingly his first two seasons. 1956 was his first really full-time season. So the years that they were active makes it more likely that this is a Sadayuki Minagawa card.

Comparing pictures of the guys, it also looks more like Sadayuki than like Mutsuo. I'm terrible with faces so I asked my wife, and she confirmed.

The only letter on his jersey that's clearly visible is an 'S', which doesn't help much. The one next to it you can sort-of see. It's not clear, and it could go either way, but it seems more likely to be an 'R' than a 'K'.

In short, this is probably a card of Sadayuki Minagawa, not Mutsuo Minagawa. It turns out that my yakyu dendo collection is not finished.

Rats.

And so, here's a quick summary of Sadayuki Minagawa's career. He was a shortstop who went pro shortly after the first professional league was founded. Considering that he was 17 as a rookie, I'm guessing he didn't have the option of signing up any earlier than he did. The Tigers were his first team, from 1937 to 1941. After that there was a long interruption in his career. Considering that he was a 21 year old athlete, I'm guessing some time in the military was involved. In 1948 he returned to baseball, joining the Flyers, for whom he played for the rest of his career. He retired from the Flyers after the 1952 season. For a while during the 1948 season he was a player-manager, and they had a good record while he was managing, but the team finished in 5th place and he never got another shot at it.

As a batter, I would characterize him as "extremely bad". Even by the extraordinarily low standards of the day, Sadayuki couldn't hit a lick. Presumably he was a good glove man, but I don't have fielding statistics from Japan in the 1940s, so I'm just going to assume that he couldn't keep his job as long as he did if he couldn't field. It sure wasn't the career 204/303/264 batting line that kept him employed. That on base percentage was okay given his context, but even in the JPBL and JPPL of the 40s and 50s, a .264 slugging percentage wasn't going to cut it.

Meikyukai - No : Hall of Fame: No

The card is an uncatalogued bromide. It's printed on thin stock with a glossy finish.

I'm at 98% on my project. If anybody's got a lead on a Mutsuo Minagawa card, let me know.
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  #248  
Old 11-24-2019, 01:28 AM
Jeff Alcorn Jeff Alcorn is offline
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Hi,

The top line on the card actually says Tokyu vs. Nankai- not Tokyo. The Flyers were the Tokyu Flyers in 1947 and then again from 1949-1953 (they went by Kyuei Flyers in 1948), so the card is definitely not Mutsuo Minagawa, the Nankai Hawks great pitcher. The second line says that the picture is of Minagawa scoring.

Mutsuo Minagawa is in the Kabaya-Leaf set and I also have 2 menko cards of him from the late 1950s that I have gotten recently, so keep searching one of his cards will come up.

Thanks for the great series, keep it going.

Jeff
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  #249  
Old 11-26-2019, 09:03 PM
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Default Masahiro Doi

Masahiro Doi was one of Japan’s great sluggers. In a career spanning 1962 to 1981, he clobbered 465 home runs, which places him 12th all-time, between Koichi Tabuchi and Tuffy Rhodes. The bulk of Doi’s career was spent with the Kintetsu Buffaloes; in 1975 he joined the Lions, for whom he spent the balance of his baseball-playing days. Doi’s best season was probably 1971, a year in which he hit 40 home runs, drove in 113 (topping 100 RBIs for the only time in his career), and putting up a 309/395/603 slash line. In addition to ranking well in career home runs, Doi is 10th all-time in hits (2452, and the player with the highest figure who has not been elected to the hall of fame), and 12th in RBIs.

Over the course of his 20 year career, Doi was selected to 15 all-star teams. As you might expect for a big slugger, he played LF-1B. (Going over MLB all-time HR leaders, guys who weren’t corner outfielders, DH, or 1B: Alex Rodriguez (3B, #4), Ken Griffey Jr (CF, #7), Mike Schmidt (3B #16), Mickey Mantle (CF #18); that’s it for the top 20.) Despite being one of the top home run hitters in Japanese history, Doi led the league in homers only once, in his first season with the Lions. He never won an MVP award. In the US the MVP awards are biased towards players from good teams, in Japan, even more so. The Buffalos are traditionally cellar-dwellers, and Doi never did play in the Japan Series. Let’s see if that’s what made the difference. Below I’ve got his best seasons, and I've compared them to the eventual winners:

1967
Doi: 28 HR, 93 RBI, 323/386/567
Mitsuhiro Adachi: 1.75 ERA, 20-10 record for the 1st place Braves

1971
Doi: 40 HR, 113 RBI, 309/395/603
Atsushi Nagaike: 40 HR, 114 RBI, 317/404/618

1972
Doi: 30 HR, 84 RBI, 300/393/554
Yutaka Fukumoto: 106 SB

1973
Doi: 29 HR, 76 RBI, 316/417/563
Katsyua Nomura: 28 HR, 96 RBI, 309/373/524 (played catcher)

1975
Doi: 34 HR, 84 RBI, 260/352/491
Hideji Kato: 32 HR, 97 RBI, 309/388/572

So, not really. Maybe he got robbed in 1967, but Adachi pitched really well, so it’s hard to say that this was a terrible injustice or anything. The league had an ERA of 3.05, so his 1.75 ERA isn’t quite as impressive as it looks, but that’s still some damn fine pitching. Every other season Doi just got out-played by the eventual winner.

Doi did lose one month of his career to the Black Mist Scandal. This was a big gambling scandal in Japanese baseball that ran from 1969 to 1971. Doi had a small part in it, and got a short suspension as a result. The central figures were members of the Lions who were throwing games (this is while Doi was still with Kintetsu). He doesn’t seem to have been accused of doing that; he was prosecuted and suspended for ‘illegal gambling’, but I don’t have details beyond that. Anyways, he got a rather light punishment, so I’m guessing that whatever he was up to was comparatively innocuous.

The transfer from Kintetsu to the Lions was a trade for Yutaka Yanagita and Hiroaki Shibaike. The former was a still fairly young pitcher (22 at the time of the trade) who would have a good couple seasons, but who I would characterize as an “innings eater”. The latter was a 28 year old relief pitcher who… eh. He was a relief pitcher with a short career. The Lions got the better player, but Yanagita was a productive pitcher for a long time.

It’s a mystery to me why Doi isn’t in the hall of fame yet. He’s clearly qualified. For comparable American players I’d look to someone like Eddie Murray or Rafeal Palmeiro. Guys who hit a fair number of home runs, and played forever (thus finishing high on all-time lists), but who weren’t A-list stars. Doi was probably better than them at his best, but the Americans who are better versions of this kind of player were better than he was. I was tempted to compare him to Carl Yestrzemksi, and while that’s not absurd, Doi didn’t have any triple crown seasons. Maybe Manny Ramirez is a good comp. Consistently one of the better players in the league, but never the best, and a long enough career to be among the all-time leaders in various slugging categories. I’m going to go with that: Masahiro Doi is the Japanese Manny Ramirez. I know why Manny isn’t in the hall yet. But unless Doi’s involvement in the Black Mist Scandal was much more serious than it appears, I don’t know why he’s not in yet.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

This card is from the massive 1976 Calbee set. Thanks to Sean for this one. I’ve still got a stack of cards that he sent me that I need to post something about.
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  #250  
Old 11-29-2019, 10:00 PM
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Default Michihiro Ogasawara

Michihiro Ogasawara was a corner infielder (mostly first base) who, at his peak, was a phenomenal batter. He played 1997 to 2015; until 2006 he was with Nippon Ham, then the Giants, and he finished his career with Chunichi. That timeline is a little bit misleading, however, as he broke into the league slowly (he was a catcher initially), and played part-time for quite a while at the end of his career. His full-time seasons (>100 games) were those from 1999 to 2010. During that stretch, he was a beast of a hitter, clobbering 30-35 home runs annually and regularly posting batting averages well over 300. Indeed, in that 12 year stretch there were only two seasons in which he hit fewer than 30 home runs (1999 and 2004) and only two in which he posted a batting average below 300 (1999 and 2005). Ogasawara’s best season looks to have been 2003, when he posted a 360/473/649 line. It’s true that it was a relatively high-scoring league, but that’s ridiculous. Let’s adjust it for context and see what it would look like in the 2019 American League.

*does math*

That’s 330/442/640. Except for the batting average, that’s a dead ringer for Mike Trout’s MVP winning 2019 season. (Trout gets the same OBP through more walks and fewer hits.) That wasn’t the year that he won the MVP award, however, as he took that trophy home in 2006 with a 313/397/573 line (it was a good year, the Fighters also won the Japan Series), and again in 2007 while hitting 313/368/539. It was almost a threepeat, as he finished second in the voting in 2008.

Because seven of Ogasawara’s 19 seasons were part-time efforts, his career counting stats are not that impressive. He qualified for the Meikyukai in 2011, but still managed only 2120 hits, of which 378 were home runs. As might be expected for someone who played seldomly apart from his peak, however, he’s got a nice slash line of 310/389/540.

Several sources report that Chunichi mainly used him as pinch hitter. No word on why he wasn’t playing full-time for the Giants before that. I guess injuries are the most likely explanation.

If you’re looking for a comparable American player, a two-time MVP who didn’t do much outside of his peak seasons calls to mind Dale Murphy. Ogasawara was the better player though. Maybe he’s a rich man’s Dale Murphy. If he had gotten an earlier start, and could have stayed on the field longer, he would have put up the bulk that you expect from the inner-circle types. But he didn’t. If he makes the hall of fame it will be on the basis of his peak performance, not his career accomplishments. In other ways he reminds me of Vlad Guerrero. Both were sluggers with high batting averages, although Vlad was faster. No surprise, since Ogasawara began life as a catcher.

He is, apparently, the “goodwill ambassador” for Ogasawara village (which, I gather, he’s not actually from or anything). In celebration of his 2000th hit they gave him a mini barrel of local rum, and he donated a jersey to the local youth baseball team.

At least one website reports that his nickname is ‘Guts’.

After retirement, Ogasawara coached in the Dragon’s minor league team. Two months ago the Dragons elected not to bring him back. It all worked out in the end, however, as it was announced on 10/10/19 that he’ll be the Fighters’ manager next season.

Here’s Ogasawara hitting a bunch of home runs.

Meikyukai – Yes : Hall of Fame – No (probably not eligible yet)

2000 Upper Deck.
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File Type: jpg Ogasawara back.jpg (51.3 KB, 289 views)
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